As Way Opens

pop exhibit

Pop book

This page deals with my identity as a pop artist. I have been a pop artist for a long time, as you can see from the xerox-art pop productions in the post below this, but I am coming to a point where I'm beginning to think about that identity and wonder if I should do anything about it.

The present phase has lasted about a year, and could be described as Kandiskian impressionism. I have been taking pictures of mountain roads, and altering them in an impressionistic way, and I've been doing this mostly for the purpose of promoting Cloud Quakers. To see some of these Kandiskian impressionistic photos, go here and you'll get a kind of gallery of Quaker promotional pop.

But it's the big picture I've been mulling over. There was a posterization phase which was quite extensive (it's called cartoon on my present photo-altering program) and there have been other phases. In a time when I am changing computers, getting out of this one and putting things in another one, and in my wife's dropbox, it is time to do an overview.

And that brings up the possibility of a pop book. It is said that I should use Lulu for this, but I'm not sure if this would be best. I am also mulling over what shape it should be, or whether I even should do it.

Just to tell a quick story: My father was an excellent photogrpaher. He went through phases where he tried to sell iit, I've been told, but when I pushed him on the issue he was very ambivalent. I'll make you a book, I told him before he died. You should have a book of photography. Actually I still feel this way: he should have a book. Someone should document his incredible career in putting reality into beautiful design. ANd now, I seem to have inherited his life work - not so much a box of slides, but just an image, in my head, of his design ability and how it should be played out in book form. It's in my head; all the work is yet to be done. But I haven't done it. Why? Because of his ambivalence. It might be that he really didn't want fame or even a reputation as a photographer. And, as I satand on that cusp, I'm working on the same questions. Is it worth the work for something I'm ambivalent about getting in the first place?

I see now that on the #popart hashtag, Andy Warhol is back. Somebody is putting three or four posts a day on there, Marilyn, everything he does. They are reminding us, basically, that Warhol is still selling like cupcakes so to speak, and you can still buy as much as you want. Warhol in fact is the belwether (sp?) of the entire art world, I've heard, because he was so prolific and because his work fetches consistently good prices every time it becomes available. OK so I'm not a Warhol yet. But the only other person on that hashtag is Rauschenberg (actively promoting himself) and the market is wide open. I could do it; I could put my own pop up there. All that remains is fro me to do the work.

postcards from the edge

In the 1990's I was in a funk and was making these postcards from a xerox machine in my office. The people where I worked were uncomfortable with taking money for my personal use of the company xerox machine but they were ok with it if I made a fair trade, and brought in supplies that they didn't have to use, in return for about ten cents a copy to set them up. Their machine was not sensitive enough to show the tape as in the scanner I use now, you can see the tape and of course that is unfortunate. So I have a box of old postcards that look slightly better than these images, but that I have not used fully, have not sent anywhere.

1994-1997 were the years that my marriage fell apart. My wife for inexplicable reasons became violent and had to get out; ultimately I split it up. I couldn't bring my children up in a war zone. But her unhappiness was probably both of our faults or at least something I didn't know how to do anything about. Nowadays I look back at that time and say, no wonder I had an edge when I got to work.

Before Illinois (1994), I had lived in Kansas, and that's where I'd started xerox art. It's actually a whole phase of my pop art production. Nowadays, I'm into Kandiskied impressionism, but then, this was it: black and white, xeroxed, intended for the snail mails.

Quaker pop

Most of the pop I do these days is for the Quakers. In fact I will show it to you. Go to the Cloud Quakers site, click on photos, and there you have it, my production for the last month or so. It's kind of my role in Quakerdom. I'm the Andy Warhol of Quakerism.

For a while I took just any old picture, and made it into pop. It was fun, because there are so many pictures out there. Some people asked me if they could have them, though, and I didn't know what to say. Finally I said no, I can use these pictures, since I'm not making money off of them, and since I've doctored them, but I can't give them away, because they aren't mine. Now I do pop only (or almost only) on my own photos. And I keep them coming.

The problem is, I'm locked down, and the lockdown isn't going away. In fact we are feeling more trapped. For a while we let our kids run around town, relating to other kids, doing their thing, but they have no concept. To them, the idea of a mask or social distancing is kind of a joke, imposed on them by grownups with their twisted fears. But anyway here I am, I have a phone, I take pictures of the country, and the road into town, and I make pop out of them.

Not that I expect anyone to notice.

Now my pop art site, which I tell you about a lot, is rolling right along. I put stuff on it whenever I can. Lately I was flirting with another demonstration exhibit, as you can see, but I backed off. There wasn't enough of it. Going back to the Quakers, you can see I've drifted there too.

So, in pop, I have several problems. One, I have to keep cranking out Quaker pop, but don't quite know what to do (I would like to keep them original too). Two, I don't really like the "skin" of my pop blog; it's not displaying up to my standards. And, it has the only link there is to this one, but it's hidden. So it keeps people away from stuff I say about pop.

The only reason I mention it is, I'm looking hard at my blogs these days. Might do some blog marketing.

The death of Christo

The Atlantic. (2020, June 1). Photos: The Works of Christo https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/06/photos-works-of-christo/612484/.

OK I'll admit it. I haven't been posting much here. I am a pop artist. I have a fairly active rate of production, but I don't put it all on my pop site because I don't really like how the blog presents it. I put a lot more on Facebook, or on Twitter.

This site is about my awareness of being a pop artist. In that regard, a guy like Christo is my hero. I'm not crazy about everything he does. But he went for the big potato, and he got it. The world is aware of him. He did art on a grand scale.

It was kind of sad, how it all ended. He had a great building in SoHo. Everyone stopped going out. As a place to be trapped, there was probably no better place, for him. But he reminded me of all my friends in New York. They live in the cosmopolitan center of the world, with fabulous interesting people everywhere, and they can't go out, can't talk to people.

I'm out in the country in a place where it hadn't rained for three months until just briefly yesterday. Now everything smells great and there's this cool air as the grasses breathe and everything comes alive. This by the way is normal, as far as I can tell; it's not extreme drought, it's just the dry season. We have one more month of dry season. The "monsoon" starts in July.

I've got a fascination with an old collection of Barbie dolls that are painted up, tattoes, messy. Their hair has never been combed. I want to line them up with an eight ball and with an old Campbell's soup-can cup.

That's a report; that's what I'm up to. I'll keep you posted.